


The rarest canvas, love

by Lilibet



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26449453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilibet/pseuds/Lilibet
Summary: Loss is the side of loving they never warn you about.And saying goodbye would make him realise that forever with Qui-Gon was the most beautiful lie he could ever have hoped to be true.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 17
Kudos: 24
Collections: Backwards QuiObi Bang





	The rarest canvas, love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acciopudding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acciopudding/gifts).



> For the reverse big bang on the QuiObi discord and inspired by [acciopudding's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acciopudding/pseuds/acciopudding) beautiful art!

_Their love was strong,_

_but timing was wrong,_

_and love decided_

_that they didn’t belong._

(s.t.)

Loss is the side of loving they never warn you about.

And saying goodbye would make him realise that forever with Qui-Gon was the most beautiful lie he could ever have hoped to be true.

\--

Love came first, sweet and strong, and brightness thrumming through his veins until it was practically spilling out of him like sunlight cresting over the horizon.

He miraculously managed to keep it from Qui-Gon somehow, obscuring his feelings, unseen but present, hiding them behind the golden veil of the mundane. He’d carefully folded and tucked them away inside himself, waiting patiently for the right time.

He’d had a foolish notion, well, maybe not foolish, but...fantastical perhaps, about how and when he’d tell Qui-Gon how he felt. Obi-Wan knew Qui-Gon was too honourable to jeopardise Obi-Wan’s future by allowing a relationship beyond that of Master and Padawan to develop between them while he remained his apprentice. So Obi-Wan had promised himself he would wait until he was knighted and would not only offer his braid to Qui-Gon after the ceremony, as was the usual custom, but also his heart as well.

At the time, Obi-Wan had smiled to himself, happy with his plan and content to wait. His master was always telling him to live in the moment, after all.

But then his naivety cost him the very thing he’d sought. And now his promise to himself burned in the back of his throat like acrid smoke, filling up his airways until he couldn’t breathe, and he was clawing at his skin with blunt nails that left angry welts in their wake.

A hole had been punched through his chest and what-if’s were running around his head in circles, taunting him with such a visceral regret that he hadn’t acted sooner, that he’d taken for granted the time that had been given to them, naively believing Qui-Gon would be waiting for him at the end with a proud smile on his face as he cut the braid from his head.

\--

Obi-Wan had watched in stoic silence, heat licking his face like the tongues of vipers, as Qui-Gon had burned on that pyre, his heart along with him and the ghost of the unknown laying heavy on him like a cloak.

All that Qui-Gon was, gone so simply as if he’d never been. The only remainders of him were the memories of those who’d known him and the lock of hair Obi-Wan had selfishly kept for himself, delicately twined into his braid.

He’d known then, staring into the fire as it mockingly twisted and turned, caressing his master’s body, that there was no coming back from this. His world had become as if made from shadows, every breath hollow in his chest and he fought to keep his composure.

The skin of his cheek had tingled still, the brush of Qui-Gon’s fingertips a phantom sensation. Obi-Wan would never forget the look in Qui-Gon’s eyes as he died. There’d been no fear as he’d drank in the sight of Obi-Wan with the little time he’d had left, but tranquillity. A serene peacefulness, calm like the surface of a still lake.

Obi-Wan’s tears had fallen freely, surrounded by the cold embrace of the generator and the rhythmic hiss of the shields as they cycled. And when the life left Qui-Gon’s body with a silent finality that shook him to his core...in that moment of loss, Obi-Wan’s world collapsed. Where there was light became shadows, the pain coming and going like waves on frigid sand, and though his mind called out for Qui-Gon’s, the connection was gone.

He was gone.

And finally, Obi-Wan knew that his time to be alone had come.

Met with deafening silence, Obi-Wan had screamed and wept until his throat was raw, the sound filled with a hysterical anguish he’d had no idea he’d been capable of.

He’d clutched Qui-Gon’s body to him as if he could bring him back by sheer force of will, the pain clawing through him had been a veritable torture with no end in sight.

He didn’t know how long he stayed down in the generator, sobbing and pleading and begging for Qui-Gon to come back, to not leave him, to not abandon him again.

It was far longer than he should have.

Longer than a Jedi should have.

\--

When they’d found him, he was silent and still as a statue, dried tear tracks down his cheeks and Qui-Gon’s body long since gone cold.

\--

Back at the temple he’d returned to their shared quarters alone, Anakin taken to the creche while his future was decided.

He’d stood in the dark doorway to Qui-Gon’s room, despair curling through him as his eyes flickered to the plants scattered on the windowsill, the knickknacks placed haphazardly on the shelves on the walls, his clothes laid over the back of the chair, and the bookcase overflowing with literature and speaking of a life well-travelled.

There was a half-finished cup of tea on the bedside table, next to an open book with a pen laying across the page, the sheets of the bed slightly rumpled as if Qui-Gon had just gotten up to go get something and would return at any moment, passing by and ruffling his fingers affectionately through Obi-Wan’s hair with a soft smile on his face.

The sheets were cold when Obi-Wan brushed them with his fingers.

\--

It’s where he found himself hours later, curled up into a ball on his side and hugging his knees to his chest, shaking in the middle of the bed and feeling more like his 13-year-old self than he had in years.

One of Qui-Gon’s spare robes was clutched in his hands like a lifeline while he wept, part of himself amazed that he even had any tears left in him. He was surrounded by Qui-Gon’s scent and he shakily breathed it in as if he could weave it into his very being, treasuring it before it disappeared like smoke, until all he would have to remember his master by was his memories and a single lock of hair.

When the dawn came, streaking across the sky in light pinks and oranges, the tears and hiccoughing breaths had stopped, and instead he was dazedly gazing out of the window, eyes half-lidded in fatigue as he silently watched sunlight creep into the room.

\--

When Yoda cut his braid, he didn’t weep. He bowed gracefully, chest aching and stomach twisting at how _wrong_ it felt. He ignored the pity in the Grandmaster’s eyes and the loud silence that followed him as he swiftly exited the room.

He toyed with the hair in his hand, slipping it over and around and in between his fingers and around his wrist for the rest of the day.

\--

There was a book that he took from Qui-Gon’s room, the one thing he would allow himself to keep. It was well worn, the spine creased, and the deep green leather cover bent with use. The two thin leather straps wrapped around it to keep it closed were frayed at the end, and Obi-Wan stroked the softness reverently. The pages were crumpled and covered with Qui-Gon’s scribbles in the margins as he slowly thumbed through it, his writing like black spiders across the pages.

As he read, his vision blurred with tears, obscuring Qui-Gon’s insights on the poems printed within. Poems that he would read to Obi-Wan when he woke after a nightmare and couldn’t sleep, or to distract him from the pain of an injury, or simply because he wanted to read something to Obi-Wan for the sake of it, his deep voice a rolling lilt that made Obi-Wan forget the words Qui-Gon had just read to him.

At the back of the book, Obi-Wan found a passage written in Qui-Gon’s sloping hand. He scrubbed away his tears and a burst of anxiety bloomed in his gut when he found it addressed to him and dated the day they’d left for Naboo the second time.

He read through it once, twice, three times, eyes tracing the elegant loops and swirls of Qui-Gon’s script, until tears blurred his vision again, dripping off his chin and smudging the ink until he closed the book with shaking hands.

He gripped it in his lap until his hands turned white, flailing helplessly to ground himself as he felt his world tilt irrevocably. When he felt less like a frayed piece of rope about to snap, he rested his palm on the cover, taking a moment to breathe.

Then, he twined his braid with the leather straps and wrapped them slowly back around the book, counting the turns, _one, two, three_ , and tucking the ends in.

In a moment of weakness, he slipped the book under his pillow.

\--

A week after his return to Coruscant, the pain no less sharp and everyone’s kind words and pitying looks making him grind his teeth and want to scream, Mace and Yoda held a memorial for Qui-Gon.

In the Room of a Thousand Fountains, a bust of Qui-Gon was placed deep in the forested area of the room under a weeping willow tree with a small waterfall trickling nearby.

Obi-Wan did not go.

He knew he should, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand in front of those people, his friends and colleagues, and pretend as though he was coping. To stand there stoically and talk about Qui-Gon as though he wasn’t the one person in the universe who he loved with his whole being, as though he hadn’t just been taken from him so abruptly and mercilessly. Before he’d even had the chance to tell him how he felt, to kiss him or know how his arms felt wrapped around him or to wake up next to him and feel his heart clench at a soft smile, the two of them bathed in golden sunlight while Qui-Gon carded his fingers through his hair.

He waited until late afternoon, when he was sure the memorial would be over. Quietly, he slipped into the room, his feet instinctively following the path Qui-Gon would lead him on as easy as breathing, winding through the trees and across the small stream until he saw it.

His breath stuttered in his chest when he saw the face, delicately carved in marble but carrying such a likeness of his master that for a split second he fooled himself into believing he was actually there, waiting for him under the tree with the sun slanting across his face. The corner of his mouth was tilted up, crow’s feet crinkling at the corners of his kind eyes as though Obi-Wan had just done something quite decidedly maverick in nature and he was trying not to laugh at him.

The world blurred and the rustling leaves and trickling water morphed into a buzz in his ears. His eyes saw nothing, losing all sight of what was, in favour of what could have been.

He heard himself take in strangled breaths, the inhales scraping down his throat while he silently sobbed, shoulders trembling as they forced their way out. He squeezed his eyes shut against the fresh wave of grief until the tears stopped, until the sun had moved across the sky and was bathing the room in an ethereal orange and purple glow.

When he calmed, sobs slowly turning into hiccoughing breaths, he approached the bust on shaky legs.

The likeness was uncanny, and he felt fresh tears prick his eyes. Slowly, so slowly it was like he was in a dream, he lifted his hand and reverently brushed his fingertips across Qui-Gon’s cheek.

In that moment, it hit him that Qui-Gon really was never coming back. He’d never hear his low chuckles reverberating through their quarters or go on missions and sigh exasperatedly at his antics or bemoan him to listen to the council. He’d never get dragged to the local markets of random backwater planets to look at little trinkets and try the local cuisine, or on spontaneous excursions to the top of a mountain just for the exhilaration of it, to breathe in the fresh crisp air rising up off the sea and relish in the sheer invigorating power of nature as his hair whipped around his face.

Never would he see his smile or earn that soft fond look that only Qui-Gon did that made Obi-Wan’s stomach swoop. Never would he twine blunt fingers in Obi-Wan’s hair, or hold Obi-Wan still, as if there were a place to which he could escape that did not contain Qui-Gon’s essence. He would not seduce with a smile, ravish with a touch, penetrate with a glance. Lost are their walks within a secret garden, or wandering his mind, a yearning verdant place that spoke of an intimacy Obi-Wan would never feel again.

Absurdly, a story Qui-Gon had once told him sprung to mind. It was a myth about a man who’d carved a beautiful marble statue and then fallen in love with it. As the story went, the gods had seen fit to reward him by breathing life into the statue, softening it with life until it grew warm under the man’s touch, gifting him a life with his beloved after he’d despaired at the prospect of never being with her.

Obi-Wan knew it was folly, but a small kernel of hope lodged itself into the corner of his heart nonetheless.

He lovingly cupped Qui-Gon’s marble cheek, a wobbly smile and a silent promise on his lips as he leaned in and closed his eyes.

Qui-Gon’s lips remained cold.

\--

_My Obi-Wan,_

_The hour is late, and I know should be sleeping instead of dwelling on my thoughts in the darkness of the ship. But there comes a time when one must be honest with themselves, and I fear that time has now come for me._

_I have been short-sighted. In my haste I have betrayed you greatly, Obi-Wan, and now I do not know how to fix this crevasse between us that I have caused. You are precious to me beyond measure, and I cannot apologise enough for making you doubt your place at my side. I know I do not say it enough, if at all, but you are an exceptional Jedi, and you have never failed to make me proud._

_I am writing this now, while you sleep across from me, relaxed in a way you seldom are in wakefulness, because I fear what tomorrow may bring. It has rooted itself in my heart, along with an unshakeable certainty that I will not see you past tomorrow. That I will not see you grow into the remarkable Knight I know you will be, whether I am there to guide you or not._

_Nobody knows when the last goodbye is, and so if this is mine, I must tell you before it is too late._

_You are everything, Obi-Wan. I have only been called a coward once in my life, and that is every single time I told myself I didn’t love you. And... I did. I do._

_It wasn’t hard to fall in love with you, Obi-Wan. It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But while my heart tells me this is the best and greatest feeling I have ever felt...my mind knows the difference between wanting what you can’t have and wanting what you shouldn’t want. And I shouldn’t want you._

_But you once said to me there is too much risk in loving, and in the hypocritical words of a foolish old man, I believe there is too much risk in not. I can talk to hundreds of people in one day, but none of them compare to the smile you can give me in one minute._

_I know the code forbids attachment, but you have known me for too long to know that I would happily throw that antiquated set of rules to the wayside in a heartbeat. But I will not jeopardise your future for the selfish wants of an old man. The galaxy is your oyster, Obi-Wan. You don’t need your old Master holding you back._

_The force is murky and unclear, like shadows in the dark, and I cannot see where it leads._

_But I promise I will love you for all the rest of my days. You will always be the one my soul reaches out for, the one I find my happiness in. I love you, and my loving is my promise._

_This is not a goodbye, my Obi-Wan, this is a thank you. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me even when I have hurt you so keenly. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever, long after I become one with the force._

_But most of all, thank you for showing me that there will come a time when I can eventually let you go._

_May the force be with you, dear one._

_Qui-Gon_

**Author's Note:**

> The story about the marble sculpture was referring to Pygmalion, a greek mythological figure that fell in love with one of his sculptures which then came to life


End file.
